I learned of the word "aphotic" when working on a side business that dealt with a lot of very messy data. The messiness of the data itself was actually the entire opportunity for the business. I thought it would be cool to find a word that conveyed the idea of "looking beyond the surface" and "diving deeper" to help my clients. Though I never ended up using the word for that use case, "aphotic", which is the region of a body of water deep enough to no longer be reached by sunlight, stuck with me. First off, I just like the sound of it and how uncommon it is - it's not even listed on wordcount.org, which means it's not among the 86,800 most commonly used English words. But also, I have come to see it as the potential basis for a useful personal philosophy. A mantra of sorts.
As time goes on and modernity introduces new challenges into our lives, it seems to me that practices of depth are becoming incresingly important in all endeavors. The virtual environments, I have found myself seduced by and lost in for an embarrisingly large portion of at least the last decade, are very superficial. People rarely read past headlines, the same basic facts and ideas bubble up again and again each time being passed off as novel, tutorial hell makes me feel like Jeremy Renner's character from the The Hurtlocker staring down the cerial aisle, and it is all programmed to purposely extract as much as our time and attention as possible.
So this will serve as my new virtual space for now. To rebuild and dive deep into the endeavors that matter most to me and my goals. Down into the depths, beyond where the light shining on the superficial can reach. Down here, in the aphotic zone I will work to create my own light.